Entrepreneurs struggle in choosing RIA technologies

There are companies that have gone through a roller coaster of emotions when Microsoft abandoned Silverlight support on Mobile platforms and Adobe abandoned Flash support on Mobile platforms.

Entrepreneurs are supposed to see the future, but when technology changes, they are no exception to what a common man goes through. The sense of fear takes over the ability to think clearly and make rational decisions. I have seen number of companies facing this dilemma, and going into a never ending spiral of confusion and uncertainty, leaving the decision making process to others (market) to decide the future of their software & service application. It is painful to sit and watch. This is very sad. I wanted to help those folks who need a help or an assurance from a tech expert, so I decided to write this blog.

Computer is still the king. A mobile application should be built based on the merits it provides. If you are building a data intensive mobile application that requires lot of data entry, then you are missing the point. Choosing the right technology is the easiest of all. You should know what you are currently providing and what you are planning to offer in the future. Once the vision is there, the rest will fall in place. It makes sense for the managers to get confused over this trivial issue. Entrepreneurs are leaders, they should know that following the crowd is not always a good strategy. Choose a technology that will transform your vision to reality and go with it. It is not in the selection of the technology that matters, but what you do with it is what really makes all the difference.

When it comes to technology, past trend is not an indicator of future trends. To my knowledge, there are three winners when it comes to RIA technologies. These technologies are here to stay, but the choice is yours to make.

1) Adobe Flex: The best RIA applications are created in Adobe Flex. Flex is best suited for delivering rich and data visualization application in the form of a web application. Works well with almost all the server side technologies.

2) HTML5 & JQuery: Light weight front end which is best suited for animation & software applications that are not data intensive. Good for creating web & mobile application.

3) Oracle ADF: Complete front to back solutions delivered using Java technologies.  It is best suited for building enterprise business solution. If you are a java shop, then Oracle ADF is something you should consider.

Every technology has its own share of pros & cons. There will never be a perfect technology to choose. Technologies always evolve and what you see now is just a beginning. Most companies compare their web site traffic with that of Google and Nasdaq, but they don’t realize is 99.9999% of them do not expect anything close to what Google or Nasdaq gets as hit counts per day. Instead of wasting the time & energy bothering about such issues, the companies should be thinking and focusing in improving user experience, and the quality of the software service they provide.

 If your company is heavily invested on Adobe’s Flex technologies, then you are way ahead of your competitors as of today.  Focus on your strength and keep moving forward.  Adobe’s comment about the future of flex is regrettable, just for that comment alone it is worth building any new application on a non flex environment.  Keep your vision current & alive, the choice of technology will take care of itself, as it is just a tool to bring your vision to reality.

Another quick advice, when choosing the technology, the use of “Open Source” is widely misused and misrepresented to suit the needs of people who represent it. Free software is not necessarily open source and Open source software is not always free software.  In most cases, Free is like in free speech and not free lunch.  Beware of it!